WASHINGTON — The four House Republicans who helped release Jeffrey Epstein’s files have called themselves “The Bravehearts” — an acknowledgment that their risky stand would require a stiff spine, especially given President Donald Trump’s staunch opposition to the move.
As they later learned, this bet would also change their political future.
Seven months after the House voted to release the Epstein files, sparking a Trump-led crusade against the rebel quartet behind the effort, one of those four lawmakers is now a former member. Two of them will not return to Congress next year. And another faces the threat of a major challenge next cycle.
“Everyone is paying the price,” Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who led the Epstein resolution and lost his May primary to a Trump-backed challenger, told NBC News in an interview. “Trump irrationally opposed it more than [defections on] the “big and beautiful bill”. This struck a chord with him.
Massie co-sponsored with a Democrat the bill requiring the Trump administration to release the Epstein Files, Justice Department documents related to investigations of the deceased sex offender. Survivors and many Trump supporters had pushed for the records to be made public.
Initially, only three other Republicans signed on: Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned from Congress late last year in part because of her feud with Trump over Epstein; Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who this week failed to advance to the runoff in her state’s gubernatorial primary race, where Trump endorsed a rival; and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who publicly faced Trump’s wrath after recently campaigning for Massie.
Sources close to the White House note that Epstein is not the only issue that has soured relations between Trump and these four members. Massie has long been a thorn in the president’s side, including voting against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” while Greene began to break with Trump in its entirety a multitude of problems last year, after the White House discouraged her from running for Senate.
Yet Trump and his allies pulled out all the stops to defeat Massie, leading to the costliest primary race in history. And he threatened to do the same to Greene, before she decided to quit mid-session.
“From the White House’s perspective, they want everyone on the team, which means always supporting the president — that’s their job. If you want to get shit in the punch bowl, the Epstein stuff is a good way to do it,” said a source close to the White House, who, like others in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s thinking.
In a statement to NBC News, the White House said Trump had been “totally exonerated in all matters relating to Epstein” and defended the president’s handling of the matter.
“By releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, signing the Epstein Records Transparency Act, and calling for more investigations into Epstein’s Democratic friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him,” White House Press Secretary Abigail Jackson said.
Yet Trump’s frustration with the four members continued to grow, even as polling by his political allies obtained by NBC News found little evidence that advocacy for releasing the files is influencing voters. An internal poll conducted in 2025 and early 2026 by the Trump-aligned MAGA KY super PAC showed that almost no voters in Massie’s district ranked the Epstein files as the most important issue at the height of the frenzy last October.
Mace, for her part, is convinced that her push for the Epstein files is what cost her Trump’s support in the governor’s race. There is no indication that Trump planned to support her before his vote on Epstein, although the president shared a social media poll in August showing Mace leading the pack, and she still appeared to be in good standing with the president at the time.
Still, Mace said she has no regrets, calling the Epstein issue a hill she was “ready to die on.”
“I knew what I was putting on the line when I voted to release the Epstein files. I’m a survivor and I would do it again,” she told NBC News.
Greene declined an interview but posted on social media the day after Mace’s loss: “Be careful. When you hunt and try to destroy those of us who fight the hardest. And you guard and protect the weakest men. Well, let’s just say you have a problem on your hands. We are not in your sect and we owe you nothing. And we are still the strongest fighters.»
Boebert is now the last one standing, but she’s still potentially on the chopping block next cycle. Trump threatened Boebert after she campaigned with his nemesis, Massie, last month, saying “anyone who can be that stupid deserves a good fight in the Primary!” »
But it was too late for another candidate to show up on the ballot for Colorado’s June primary.
“Look, the only thing that saved the day for Lauren Boebert this year was the schedule,” a source close to the president said. “She may not be so lucky in the future.”
A Republican operative also suggested that Boebert could be in deep trouble in the long run.
“Massie was already a dead man by the time he started getting really interested in this. MTG, it seemed like that was a big factor – she was still doing well until early fall,” the agent said. “With Boebert, the situation seems to have deteriorated very quickly because of some of these problems. In the next Congress, Boebert’s affairs, I saw them as very serious.”
Boebert downplayed Trump’s attacks on him. “It doesn’t worry me. I support the president,” she told NBC News last week.
But she also became frustrated when asked about her role in the fight over the Epstein files and seemed eager to deflect attention from that issue.
“Are we ever going to talk about things that are relevant, that we actually vote on? Will it still be Epstein?” said Boebert. “That’s the only question a reporter asks me. It’s just Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. I’ve done everything in my power to release the records and bring justice to the victims in one form or another.”
Promoting the Epstein files created a bond between the four Republicans involved in the effort. Their support was key to securing the votes required for a so-called discharge petition, which allowed them to bypass leaders and force a floor vote on the resolution. (When the bill was debated, all but one Republican voted for it.)
But House Republican leaders and the White House have made an all-out effort to try to prevent the resolution from ever coming to a vote. This largely consisted of trying to convince one of the three Republican women to remove her name from the release petition.
The four lawmakers decided to form a focus group, which they named “The Bravehearts,” where they could share updates and support each other amid the intense pressure campaign they were facing.
At one point, Boebert was summoned to the White House for a situation room meeting with senior Trump officials, who tried to convince Boebert to back down, Massie said. But before the meeting, Massie said, the rest of the group provided him with plenty of information to help him refute the arguments they expected from officials.
“She had no intention of going out there and spelunking,” Massie said. “It was like studying for a test. She wanted to know every aspect of the bill and what was wrong about what they said.”
For the most part, the group appears to be at peace with how the fight played out and affected their political careers, noting that the law making the Epstein files public will be a defining part of their legacy.
“When I’m in my rocking chair on the farm in 20 years, whoever the attorney general is, if he finds new material on Epstein, he’s going to have to release it in 30 days,” Massie said.
And they stayed in touch. After losing his primary race, Massie and his wife went on vacation with Greene and her fiancé to Costa Rica. During the trip, they even paid little attention to their situation.
“We joked that she jumped out of the plane and I landed her on the ground and we both ended up in Costa Rica,” Massie said.